AS Byatt, Islamic fundamentalism, bodies and polictics all feature among the
best new paperbacks

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, this sprawling but involving tale of English Bohemian families between 1895 and 1919 explores adult responsibility and childishness, artistic creativity’s relationship to morality, and a great deal more. The writing, including imitations of Edwardian children’s literature, is as richly textured and often as dark as the Art Nouveau ceramics in the story, while passages of erudition sit like padding between the author’s passionate and personal characters. OPHELIA FIELD

Dead Spy Running By Jon Stock. Blue Door, £6.99

This classy thriller opens with a would-be suicide bomber at the London Marathon and ends with an assassination attempt in New Delhi. In between, the action never flags – the hero is tortured, kidnapped, gets the girl, loses the girl, goes into hiding, and plays mind games with intelligence chiefs. The novel synthesises the cerebral irony of John le Carré and the rawer excitements of a post-9/11 blockbuster. SALLY COUSINS

A View from the Foothills By Chris Mullin. PROFILE, £7.99

Want to know where New Labour went wrong? Or what it feels like to work for John Prescott? Then read these sad, sour, occasionally hilarious diaries by one of the foot soldiers in the Blair administration. Like Alan Clark before him, Chris Mullin was a junior minister with an unerring eye for the foibles of his pushier colleagues. His insider’s account of the period between 1999 and 2005 will be indispensable to future historians. SC

From Fatwa to Jihad By Kenan Malik. Atlantic, £9.99

Kenan Malik challenges commonly held assumptions about the reasons for the rise of 'radical Islam’ and its terrorism, while accusing some unlikely suspects such as British identity politics and multiculturalism. Importantly, this book places the erosion of free speech at the heart of the 'war on terror’ story, providing insightful context to Khomeini’s 1989 Fatwa, the 2006 Danish cartoon furore, and other recent silencings by both totalitarian regimes and liberals afraid of offending on the home front. OF

It’s Our Turn to Eat By Michela Wrong. Fourth Estate, £8.99

As a journalist working in Nairobi in the mid-1990s, Michela Wrong made friends with a man later drafted into the government as anti-corruption tsar. John Githongo – large, idealistic, intelligent – was fiercely committed to his job, but he found that he was powerless to change anything in the face of deeply endemic corruption. So he turned whistle-blower. Wrong’s account of his story, rich with her own knowledge of the country, is compelling. KATIE OWEN

Bodies By Susie Orbach. Profile, £8.99

Susie Orbach argues passionately against the rise of 'body shame’, an issue she sees as synonymous with our media-saturated times. She is at her most convincing when she examines specific cases: such as a woman finding peace with her troubled foster daughter only when the girl asked to have her hair regularly styled by her: the physical connection healed rifts that words had been unable to do. KO